Decisions On The Rules Of Golf 2014

What Actually Happened With The 2014 Rules Revision

The 2014 Decisions book came out right before the massive overhaul that hit in 2019, so it occupies this weird middle ground. It contains all the official interpretive rulings that were current from January 2014 through December 2018, but it completely misses the new framework that replaced it. If you're reading this because someone lent you an old book or you found a PDF floating around somewhere, you need to understand what it covers and, more importantly, what it doesn't. The structure itself is different from anything that came before or after. Decisions are organized by rule number and then by sub-question. Rule 13-2 gets several dozen individual decisions beneath it, each addressing a very specific scenario like whether you can improve the area of your stance when your ball lies in a bunker, or whether moving a immovable obstruction near your foot constitutes prohibited improvement. The format is essentially Q-and-A with minimal commentary. You look up your situation, you get a yes or no answer with a brief rationale attached. I spent probably three full weekends working through the Decision numbering system because it is not intuitive. The book uses a four-part numbering scheme: Rule number, then the decision number, then sub-parts like (a), (b), (c). A Decision like 13-2/0.5 exists, which means it sits between the general section and the first numbered sub-decision. People routinely miss these intermediate entries. I lost twenty minutes once searching for a Decision about casual water on the line of putt because I didn't realize the answer was filed under a decimal-numbered entry rather than a whole number. The R&A and USGA publish the whole thing as a single volume with roughly 600-some Decisions spread across all 34 rules.

How To Use Decisions On The Rules Of Golf 2014 In A Real Round

Here is the practical approach. You need a copy. There are legal PDF versions circulating from older R&A publications, and you can also grab the physical book from any sporting goods retailer or second-hand source. Having it on your phone as a downloaded PDF is worth it because carrying a 200-page book around the course is impractical. Search functions in PDF readers save you something like ten minutes per occurrence when you are looking up a specific situation compared to flipping through the index. When you encounter a ruling question on the course, don't just look at the rule number. Go directly to the Decisions section for that rule and scan through every entry. The actual answer might be in a Decision that doesn't precisely match your wording but addresses the underlying principle. I learned this the hard way during a club championship when my ball was plugged into the bank of a waste bunker, and I needed to know whether I could remove a loose impediment (a dried leaf) from touching the ball without penalty. Rule 23 covers loose impediments generally, but the specific answer I needed was actually in Decision 23-1/8, which deals with loose impediments that are attached to or growing from the ground when your ball lies near them. The Decision made clear that if the impediment is natural and not fixed, you may remove it even if it happens to touch your ball, provided you don't improve your lie beyond what the removal itself causes. The rule alone wouldn't have given me that level of detail. One thing most people miss about the 2014 Decisions is how much weight they give to the concept of "reasonable actions." Several Decisions hinge on whether a player's actions were reasonable under the circumstances rather than on a strict letter-of-the-law interpretation. Decision 13-2/0.25, for example, addresses whether a player may test the surface of a bunker with their club before making a stroke. The answer is no, but the reasoning explicitly notes that walking into the bunker and placing your feet naturally is fine. The line between acceptable and prohibited is thinner than most players realize, and the Decisions explain it better than the rule text alone ever does.

Another counter-intuitive point: the 2014 Decisions book treats water hazards and lateral water hazards differently even though the underlying penalty is the same (one stroke). Decision 26-1/1 clarifies that when you drop behind a water hazard, the point where the ball last crossed the margin is still the reference point, but the area behind the hazard is not measured from the edge of the hazard itself. It is measured from an imaginary line extending from the hole through that crossing point. This matters because on a dogleg course with a lateral hazard running along the fairway, your drop zone can end up in a completely different location than you expect. I have seen at least three players drop in the wrong place because they assumed the drop area was measured from the hazard boundary rather than from that extension line. They were playing under local rules that didn't override the standard procedure, so the penalty applied. The 2014 Decisions also have a quirk with Decision numbering for Rule 33. Rule 33 covers the Committee, and several Decisions under it deal with local rules and course setup. If you are playing a tournament with unusual conditions, the relevant Decision is often 33-2/3 or 33-8/1, which address what a Committee can and cannot authorize. These are the Decisions that matter most when a course has temporary abnormal ground conditions marked with white stakes instead of the standard yellow or red stakes for water hazards.

What This Book Cannot Do For You

The single biggest limitation is that anything decided or interpreted after 2018 is completely absent. The 2019 rules change reorganized the entire structure. Many rules from the old system were merged, split, or renumbered entirely. Rule 13-2 about improving the lie of the ball became Rule 8 in the new system. Rule 25 about abnormal ground conditions became Rule 16. If you apply a 2014 Decision to a post-2019 rule number, you will get the wrong answer because the rule it referenced no longer exists in that form. Similarly, the 2014 Decisions do not address mobile phone use during a round. Decision 60-5 covers communications devices, but the guidance written in 2014 reflects technology from that era. The subsequent changes to the Rules of Golf regarding electronic devices are not captured here. If you need guidance on whether your GPS watch constitutes an allowed device under the current rules, this book won't help you. The Decisions also don't cover every possible edge case. There are literally thousands of hypothetical situations that the R&A and USGA have never formally addressed. If your problem isn't in the book, you either look to the general principles in the Rules themselves or you request a formal Decision from the governing bodies, which can take weeks. In a match play situation where you need an answer immediately, you and your opponent can agree to play a ball under Rule 3-3 if you are genuinely uncertain, but that is a time-consuming workaround that most players try to avoid.

If you are currently playing under the modern rules, the correct reference is the 2023 Decisions on the Rules of Golf, which aligns with the current rule structure. The 2014 version has genuine historical and archival value, and it remains useful for anyone studying how the rules evolved or for handling disputes on courses that have not adopted the post-2019 framework for some reason. But for active play, it is outdated. The 2019 and later revisions simplified a lot of things that the 2014 Decisions spent pages explaining in exhausting detail. Knowing when to use the old book and when to put it away is part of understanding the game at a deeper level.